I’m sure you think I’m nuts. It’s totally fine. People have literally thought that about me since I was 5. I stand by what I say – we do ourselves and our children a disservice every time we tell them, “Hey, it could be worse!” or, “Be the change you wish to see in the world!”

In fact, you could be contributing – not causing, but contributing – to the opioid epidemic that is happening right now in our country.

Now I bet you think I’m really crazy, eh?

Let me explain a bit further. There are positively viewed emotions like happiness, joy, silliness. And there are negatively viewed emotions like anger, jealousy and sadness that are typically stereotyped as morally “bad” to experience. Think about it. Would you want to be labeled as a jealous husband who rants at his wife about where she was? Or an angry mother who yells at her children seven times out of ten? No, of course not, because if you’re emotionally abusive you’re in the “bad” category. Even though the wife most definitely played a part in his jealousy. And if you’re the shouting mom, you most certainly are not as good as all those attachment mothers.

But here’s the thing. Anger and jealousy isn’t good or bad. They are simply ingenious little signs our bodies gave us to tell us where to go. Here’s a little answer key, courtesy of Pixar’s “Inside Out” and Glennon Doyle:

Anger: Tells us when something is not fair.

Jealousy: Tells us when we want something someone else has.

Fear: Keeps us safe. Physically and emotionally.

So yeah, negative emotions aren’t that negative, it turns out. They’re actually pretty fucking vital to our existence, and if you’re making fun of them, you’re living by an extremely outdated code. However, in a Trump era, where pull-yourself-up-by-the bootstraps-baby-boomer-either-or attitudes exist, this can be hard to remember. And some people can make you feel like embracing emotions means you’re weak. This, I tell you, is complete bullshit. Humans can hustle and work 12 hours a day and still tune into their feelings.

The smartest, healthiest, most successful people I know follow their gut intuition about situations and others.

Let me get back to my point about all of us contributing to addictions.

Say your child got up and started whining about going to school. “Mama, I’m so tired. I can’t go to school today. I hate going to school.”

“Honey, you have to go. I can’t do anything about it. You can do it!”

VERSUS:

“Mama, I’m so tired. I can’t go to school today. I hate going to school.”

“Honey, I bet you’re super tired after your first week back. I can’t even imagine. I feel like that about work too.”

Because the thing is, we do indeed live in a super insane world that doesn’t provide for enough sleep for our children. And it’s ok to validate that for them. It doesn’t mean you still can’t teach them the value of showing up for something when they don’t feel like it. They’ll feel seen and they won’t be taught by you that their negative feelings need to be squashed immediately. Because what’s one way addicts can start to be addicts? By having strong emotions, and being told they’re “overdramatic” or to “get over it”. Then they find tricky ways to numb their strong emotions that their community or society rejects. Eating a whole pan of brownies. Drinking their mother’s beer. Shooting up the next town over. All because they were taught not to sit with themselves and their strong feelings. I’m sure some 12 Step programs will disagree, but that’s ok, I didn’t fit in there either.

The truth? We all have to feel a feeling until it’s done coursing through our brain. And the more we push it away, the bigger it will come back.

A lot of people – including my husband – accuse me of being too cynical, too pessimistic. Nah. I’m usually just telling the truth or calling the situation as to how I see it. I, in turn, think they’re (typically) uncomfortable with the negative emotions I point out because society has socialized them that way.

Humans are these super amazing, instinctual beings who literally know the way like Moana, if only they listened to every emotion.

And am I the perfect parent who meets her daughter where she is every minute of every day? No fucking way. On a bad day, I push my anger away, which makes it bigger, and then makes me scream like a crazy woman at my daughter.

Today it was painful to be alive. Every fiber of my being was uncomfortable; I couldn’t stand the weight of my body today. It hung on me. I felt it in my jeans and felt every bite in my stomach. If you think I’m being dramatic, I’m not; this is how I experience things sometimes, as someone in recovery from an eating disorder. Ask someone else you know who’s in recovery from one.

I have days like this. Bad days. Days when I envision myself swinging into a binge cycle again. Days when I envision swinging into a restrictive cycle as a result of the aforementioned binge cycle. And I went into recovery ten (!!) years ago. Sad and destructive? Hardly. Realistic, I think. Given the other comorbid diagnoses I’ve dealt with.

I’ve talked about the “once you’ve recovered, you’ve recovered!” camp for a long time. The people who claimed they had a “lightbulb” moment and never turned back, never put their body down again, never consulted with ED once more. OK, being a bit (a bit) more humble now, I’ll bite (no pun intended): I bet there are a select few who’ve had this experience. Perhaps the same amount who’ve married someone they’ve never fought with, or who had a mind-numbing spiritual experience and never craved a drink again. But for most of us bozos on the bus, I just don’t think it’s that simple.

(Speaking of that, I really wanted to drink today. But I didn’t. Whoop de frickin da.)

For most of us, we wake up and don’t have time to meditate for twenty perfect minutes, and no, we weren’t going to wake up twenty minutes earlier, because we were up tossing and turning/up with our kids and needed that extra 20. For most of us, we’re shot out of a cannon when our kid peels our eyelids open with their fingers/when our cat meows in our face. We then head downstairs to find cat puke right in front of the bathroom doorway, and in between reaching for the bathroom cleaner, silently bemoan the fact that we still owe 25,000 in student loans and will never be able to afford a house – now, now we are judging ourselves for not being mindful and worrying senselessly, and our daughter is yelling for the TV to be turned on, that ever-destructive-causer-of-doom TV, and we’re reminding her to use her manners. And that’s only the first 5 minutes.

That is how most of us go through our day. Well, you’ll have to excuse me. That’s how I go through it; I can’t speak for all of you.

That’s why, when I hear people speak of “never turning back” on recovery and being “free of ED”, I am skeptical. Did never turning back account for those six weeks post-birth when you couldn’t exercise because your body was healing and your mind when nuts because of it? No, it didn’t. And did being “free of ED” chide you relentlessly when you decided to restrict your eating when your father died because it was the only way you could cope? Yes, it did, because wasn’t I supposed to do this recovery thing perfectly? And here I was, nine years in, having a small relapse?

Being perfect at recovery doesn’t work for me because being perfect was the essence of my life-killing eating disorder.

It’s important that I can screw up at this thing, and know that it’s still ok. That it doesn’t mean this time I lose my job because I’m too weak; that it just means I go to more meetings and therapy. I think, unfortunately, this is a chronic disease, and that’s not marketable in the field of recovery. It’s not marketable to say, “You’re going to deal with a little of this for the rest of your life.” But that’s how addiction is. You have to keep an eye on it. It’s always in wait.

And keeping an eye on myself everyday? Is that a tedious thing? No, it’s actually a beautiful, heartbreaking and staggering undertaking that has only served to better me as a person. I’ve heard people in self-help meetings claim they are grateful for their addiction, and I jive with that. The things I’ve discovered about myself due to this journey. And, I think it’s really healthy and humble when one can name all the parts of themselves. The addict, the fighter, the daughter, the singer, the crier, the writer. To dismiss one part of yourself, even a dark part, would be doing a disservice to yourself.

Don’t get me wrong; I hope to God I wake up tomorrow and magically have the hypomanic get-up-and-go that I usually have; I hope I go for a run and get those wonderful ol’ endorphins rushing. I wish I could have someone else’s brain. But I don’t. I have an eating disorder and I can’t drink and I have depression. The grace in all of this, the marker that tells me that I’m growing, is that I now know this too shall pass. I didn’t always know that. And that’s a gift that didn’t magically appear to me one day. It came to me after years of hard work on myself that really wasn’t all that simple.

I never thanked all the bullies at my high school for the wisdom they unknowingly passed on to me through their years of emotional and physical abuse. I never expressed gratitude for the lessons I was lucky enough to learn early on in life.

So, if you were one of the people who hurt me because you were probably so cruelly abused and hurt yourself, and you’ve been waiting for a nod of recognition, here goes.

To the little boy down the street who was friends with me when my mother was around, but refused to sit in a chair I sat in at school, exclaiming, “I won’t touch it if fatty sat there!”, thank you. Not only did you teach me that the separation between “pretty” and “ugly” starts early, but you taught me to pick my friends as carefully as one balances on a tight-rope wire. You taught me to beware of people’s masks, and that some are really good at hiding their true selves behind that mask.

To the boy I had a crush on who wouldn’t clap for me when I got a music award in the seventh grade because I was simply, “Amanda Bruce”: thank you. You taught me compassion. Why? You were nice to me when it was just you and me at our lockers, but ignored me when you were around your friends. In the end, I felt bad for you, because it was probably really hard to be a nice, popular kid who felt pressured by his friends to do what they did.

To the girl who called me “Turtle” since I appeared slow to her because of my size, I bow in gratitude. First of all, you made me hyperaware of my size and lack of coordination. I bought into the belief that I couldn’t do anything athletically for a very long time. So much so that I developed an eating disorder because I was ashamed of my body’s appearance and what it couldn’t do. And then, years later, I would have to go into treatment and take a very hard, long look at myself and those beliefs. It would take awhile, but I would then realize they were bullshit. I would start to run. I would start to love it. And finally, I would run for not what my body looked like, but for my internal sense of peace.

There’s a second part of my thanks to you, Turtle girl: thank you for calling me “a slut” and “too fat to wear leggings” at a school dance. That night, I came home from the dance and cried. My mother cried too, for a long time, because her baby had a horrible time at one of her first junior high school dances. That night, the bond between my mother and I became stronger than ever. I wonder if you ever had a night like that with your mother. I’m grateful I did. And you know what? I hate the word SLUTbecause of you. I won’t call another female it because it’s an incorrect, stereotyped, misogynistic word. Thank you for inspiring the power of feminism in me.

To the boy who invaded my boundaries and tried to touch my leg repeatedly in music class: many thanks. Because you viewed me as beneath you due to my weight, you felt you could attempt to harass me. And you did, then. But now? My boundaries are rock-solid. They were too solid for awhile, and I didn’t let many people in. But now people can’t take advantage of me even when I share things like this. Why? Because I know how to take care of myself and defend myself. I have turned the ugliness into beauty, and into love, and no one can take advantage of that.

To the adults in my life who didn’t stop the bullying when it happened: I am grateful. Because of you, I am the fiercest mama lion to my beautiful daughter. You showed me exactly how not to be around children who are victimized. When you forced me to stand up to eat lunch because you wouldn’t consequence the kids who wouldn’t let me sit with them on a field trip, you saved another kid from being bullied on the playground twentyish years later. Because even on a nannying job in grad school, I kept my eye out for the kid on the playground who wasn’t treated fairly. And you’ve also taught me to take a step back and let my daughter defend herself when she needs to. You’ve taught me to not be an over-involved parent who screws up her child.

You see, I’ve spent years feeling tortured, controlled, and dominated by these memories. Until I realized that a whole lot of love can emerge from hate, if we have the courage to stop and lead an examined life.

So on this Spirit Day, where we raise awareness for bullying, I salute you, bullies. I acknowledge what you’ve been through and have compassion for it. I can’t possibly understand the depths of your life experience.

I will, however, see your hate, and raise you with understanding and change.

This week’s link comes to us from Pam G, a friend from college who is a caring Mom of three (one older son and twin boys – she’s my hero!) The article is written by Stefanie Wilder-Taylor, who has a TV show and books and other fabulous stuff. It’s called Please Don’t Talk About Your Weight In Front of My Daughters,and in it she writes about the importance of adults NOT putting their own bodies down in front of kids.

Why?

Kids do what we do, not what we say. So even if you tell them they’re gorgeous and breathtaking, they’re still probably going to have bad body image if you talk shit about your abs 24/7.

In case you didn’t know, Good ol’ New England is having a heat wave; the temps are expected to hit 93 before the end of today. So naturally, I went to Revere Beach this morning with my 17 month old daughter. It was 85 degrees by 9 in the morning. Crazy.

I grew up overhearing tales of the old Revere Beach from my mother; she regaled us with stories of cotton candy and vomit-inducing roller coaster rides with her cousin. It’s nothing like it used to be; it used to be a resort area filled with amusements and fast food. Now, after a couple of conspiracy-story fires that were set, it’s just quiet. Which is fine.

I camped out right where the dry sand met the wet, mushy stuff. My daughter wanted nothing to do with the cold, rolling waves, but loved the sand. So she literally bathed in it. While I was leaning over to make a sandturtle, she had dumped a pile of sand on her head. A thick layer of sand coated her scalp. I groaned inwardly, but laughed to myself. Because the best thing that’s ever been taught to me was by my daughter – the art of letting go. The art of getting messy and not caring what things look like.

Before I had her, I would spend 20 minutes on my eye makeup. I would have long pedicures at home and just curl my hair for fun sometimes. Now, I don’t have time for that stuff. Which sucks, sometimes, but it’s great, in another way.

Why?

When you are eating a mud pie and smooshing it all over your face, you don’t care if your blue veins are showing through your pale Irish skin. You’re having fun and marvelling at the fabulousness of having mud pie ALL OVER YOUR FACE. When you’re throwing sand in the wind, you don’t pay attention to the cellulite on your thighs because you’re jumping in big, funny lunges to avoid getting sand in your eyes. And when you’re picking up shells, you’re not caring about your untoned tummy, because you are collecting little magical treasures, one at a time.

Don’t get me wrong. I still have control problems; you’d probably all laugh at my nighttime routine, which is OCD-esque and consists of this strange “sweep-the-entire-house-feed-the-cats-change-their-litterbox” routine. But spending time has done wonders for my body image; I use my body in way more fun ways now than I ever did.

Do you remember that time? Before you hit puberty and all hell broke loose? When you made soup in the ground with sticks and leaves? When you rode bikes just as fast as the neighborhood boys? When girls were equal to boys and just as capable?

How’s everyone doing? Hope you’re having a great Friday. I’m kind of blah, to be honest…have a migraine and am exhausted…but I didn’t want to skip posting this AWESOME blog post my friend Michelle sent me on FB.

In this post, this brave mama blogs about her fearless daughter, and her attempt to explain beauty to her (which she does flawlessly). I totally related to it because my daughter is a little daredevil with tons of energy, and is always having accidents like her daughter had.

Every day I’m convinced I’m going to give my 16 month old an eating disorder.

Which is stupid, really, because it’s not just one thing that causes one – but the fact that I’m recovered from one ups the ante a little bit.

Let me give you an example:

Every week, my daughter has her play group and like one week out of the month we stop to get Dunkin’ Donuts right before (me: iced french vanilla with cream, you know it, and her: one or two munchkins ((crazy baby doesn’t seem to care either way for them. WHAT??)) This morning, as I narrated her life, as I do maniacally every day, I said absentmindedly, “So we’ll get in the car and we’ll stop at Dunkin Donuts.”

She halted. Her head swiveled and her eyes lit up.

I guess she cared more about those sprinkles-encrusted balls of goodness than I previously thought.

And my head went into a mindspin. Is this why she’s in the 90th percentile? She’s going to get bombarded by obesity comments at the doctor’s in a couple of years. I’m so bad for giving her sugar, at all? I’m going to parent hell! I might as well be Honey Boo Boo’s mom! I might as well set up camp at McDonald’s. I’m ruining my daughter’s future!!!!!!

And then I stop, take a pretend Xanax, and reality-check myself.

First, I try to remember my therapist’s words (“It’d be pretty hard to force food to a baby, Amanda”). Then, I remember that I feed my baby quinoa on a regular basis.

(You should have seen it when I tried to explain what it was to my mother. She kept going, Kinney? Quinna? Finally I had to tell her to remember Joaquin Phoenix but backwards.)

(Some might even call me a “Quinoa Mom” – horrors)

And I mix spinach into her sweet potato so my fruit-lover will get some much-needed vegetables as well. And I buy those overpriced organic pouches so she’ll eat SOMETHING nutritious on a day when all she wants is cheese in 1/2 inch squares only. And, I don’t keep juice in the house. And over my dead body will she have soda.

I think my downfall is comparing myself to those gluten-free-paleo-vegan-vegetarian-GMO free mothers who don’t let a drop of sugar pass into their kids’ sacred bodies. But that’s kind of redonk, because a. I’m never going to be that kind of mother and b. I don’t, personally, think that’s healthy. Do I think kids should snack on Happy Meals regularly? No way. But do I think they should enjoy the occasional bowl of ice cream that you can get messy in and smash all over your face? Absolutely. That’s part of being a kid.

And lastly, I try to remember the work I did on myself that brought me to the place where I don’t attach moral value to food, and the valuable lesson I will pass on to her.

I was asked that question 35 times the week before Easter. It was as if my child was going to a debutante ball. I tried to shrug off vague annoyance and proceeded to judge myself for having that vaguely uneasy feeling. But after judging myself as a “think-too-much Mom”, (Yes, I have been told that, even though I was under the impression it is 2013) I snapped upright and paid full attention to that feeling. I was annoyed, because –

Girls are supposed to be pretty and feminine and all decked out for everyone else’s enjoyment. Raiiight??

Perhaps boys’ mothers got asked as much; I don’t know because I haven’t had the chance to ask my mama friends yet. But I have an inkling that the pressure is on the girls, yet again, to step up to the plate and look pretty. The fashion industry snaps us up at birth by making girls’ clothing more fun. I’ve heard a million times from mama friends in hushed tones, “I love putting him in this suit, but it’s much more fun to look in the girls section. You have so much more.”

Can I please put my daughter in ripped jeans and a wife beater next year? Please?

OK, I’ll calm the feminist rebel in me for a second. Do I love dressing my daughter up? Of course. Is the baby girls’ clothing department aesthetically pleasing? Hell yes. But does your happiness and satisfaction lay in my daughter’s appearance? No it doesn’t. And my daughter and I also don’t want your projections of what a little girl should act or be like.

And even though I try to shield myself from the judgment, I then feel like I have to wipe off every frickin crumb off my daughter’s face and straighten out every hair from her ponytail. Aaaaand, the funny thing is, I don’t, because a kid’s job is be messy and ruin her clothes and fall sometimes.

And the bonnet! The f^%&ing Easter bonnet. I had a million frickin comments from people because she wasn’t wearing one. OK. If they only knew putting (and keeping) a hat on my kid is like trying to write with a gummy worm. Or something. And I’m not going to put my kid in something she hates just for appearances.

I’m not saying change tradition and stop parading kids around in their Sunday best once a year. I’m just saying, be aware. Body image and gender stereotyping stuff starts YOUNG. And it’s not me “thinking too much.”

Meta

My mother, who is compassionate to a fault and takes care of all living things, even the insects, complains when I don’t tolerate family gossiping about me because she is more committed to order than justice. She wishes I would try harder with people who have told me I never should have been a mother. […]